Daisy de Melker: Hiding among killers in the City of Gold by Ted Botha

Author:Ted Botha [Botha, Ted]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-04-05T12:50:51+00:00

CHAPTER 41

Small arms and machine guns

As Rhodes Cowle was being buried, Harry Morris was on the overnight train from Johannesburg to Pietermaritzburg, to lead the defence of Dicky Mallalieu. Even before opening arguments began, on 8 March 1932, luck was on Harry’s side.

It had been agreed to try his client and Gwen Tolputt separately (Morris was not representing her), and, to the Crown’s further displeasure, the judge also said Tolputt’s confession to the murder while in jail could not be entered as evidence in Mallalieu’s trial.

But there were still the bullets from the Astra gun, which appeared to tie Mallalieu to the crime. The casings – from Kimber’s taxi and Hollins’s hotel room – bore the same ‘SB’ mark (which stood for Sellier & Bellot, the Czech manufacturer) as well as identical ejector imprints. No two firing pins, the prosecutor said, left exactly the same impression on a cartridge case, but any single weapon always left an identical print. When empty cases were automatically ejected, they also bore characteristic markings, though their depth might vary slightly according to how violently they had been ejected.

Before questioning got to the Astra, as one crime reporter recalled, Morris swatted witnesses aside with ease: ‘Definite assertions appeared to be assumptions. Recollections faded into after-thoughts. Rumour and hearsay had been intermingled with facts. He was able to show some of the witnesses were incapable of telling the whole truth even if, or when, they wanted to.’

Then came Captain Montague Barraclough, who was just the kind of expert witness Harry loved to take on – and decimate. The most respected ballistics expert in the country – in fact, he was the only one – his evidence was rarely challenged. For the trial, Barraclough had taken hundreds of photographs – close-ups of bullets, casings, indentations, headstamps, scratch marks and ejector imprints – which Morris, of course, had studied until he knew every mark, scratch and discrepancy.

Barraclough, on taking the stand, was handed the two sets of bullets and casings – from Kimber and Hollins – as well as others that had been used in tests conducted with Mallalieu’s Astra pistol. All of them, he said, had similar characteristics and identical markings. He added that in all his experience as a ballistics expert, he had seen similar marks produced on bullets and cartridges only by pistols of the same make and calibre. This the jury could see in the multiple photographs he had taken.

Tests had also been carried out on six other Astras, Barraclough said. Pointing out the markings on their cases, he declared that they were different ‘all the way through’, and there was absolutely no possibility of any similarity between them.

Morris rose slowly to his feet. He quickly fanned out his gown and smoothed his silk waistcoat. Starting courteously, to put Barraclough at his ease, he asked some preliminary questions about ballistics treatises, and the mechanism and peculiarities of firearms and ammunition. Then the attack began.

‘You have never,’ he emphasised, ‘been opposed by another firearms expert in South Africa?’

Barraclough agreed.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.